Lot more deaths from shooting a bullet into the air (do they not *realize* that it comes down at high velocity? seriously) than from waving around sparklers, in my opinion.

Who are doing this, and on what occasion? I had not heard of this, it sounds scary!!

People with no sense, and on pretty much any occasion they can come up with I've known two people to get injured from this, both while I was a college, both times from an idiot shooting off a gun a quarter-mile away and not realizing the whole "I shot a bullet into the air / It fell to earth, I knew not where" thing. (With apologies to Longfellow - I'm sure he'd be against this too, if his arrow had hit a person instead of an oak . . .)

I used to believe bullets just lose momentum when they come down, so eventually they would pose no more danger than a thrown rock.

Apparently it takes a lot of time and distance before they lose momentum - they are much more likely to hit things first.

Mythbusters did an episode on this and mostly busted it. If a bullet is shot straight up into the air, it's no more dangerous than a falling rock of the same size. The problem occurs if it's shot at an angle and gets to hit something before gravity takes over.

I actually just watched that episode. While they did conclude that a bullet shot straight up would not be lethal on the way down, they also had difficulty actually making sure the shot was straight up. Even with the gun fastened into a frame standing on the ground and a special triggering mechanism to allow it to be fired in that orientation, they still had bullets landing over 300 feet away from the gun. So it's pretty unlikely that people holding a gun and firing into the air will actually fire straight up rather than at some angle from the vertical. Also, the non-lethal terminal velocity they observed was based on the bullets tumbling in the air, so that they fell and landed on their sides (not tip first). This was observed when the bullets were fired straight up from their specially-rigged gun. However, they also spoke to an expert with documented cases of people dying from bullets fired into the air and hit the victims tip-first. The Mythbusters speculated (but did not test) that bullets fired at an angle from the vertical could maintain their spin, stabilizing their flight so that they would travel tip-first. This would present a smaller cross-section and most likely a higher (and potentially lethal) terminal velocity.

Lot more deaths from shooting a bullet into the air (do they not *realize* that it comes down at high velocity? seriously) than from waving around sparklers, in my opinion.

Who are doing this, and on what occasion? I had not heard of this, it sounds scary!!

People with no sense, and on pretty much any occasion they can come up with I've known two people to get injured from this, both while I was a college, both times from an idiot shooting off a gun a quarter-mile away and not realizing the whole "I shot a bullet into the air / It fell to earth, I knew not where" thing. (With apologies to Longfellow - I'm sure he'd be against this too, if his arrow had hit a person instead of an oak . . .)

I used to believe bullets just lose momentum when they come down, so eventually they would pose no more danger than a thrown rock.

Apparently it takes a lot of time and distance before they lose momentum - they are much more likely to hit things first.

Mythbusters did an episode on this and mostly busted it. If a bullet is shot straight up into the air, it's no more dangerous than a falling rock of the same size. The problem occurs if it's shot at an angle and gets to hit something before gravity takes over.

I actually just watched that episode. While they did conclude that a bullet shot straight up would not be lethal on the way down, they also had difficulty actually making sure the shot was straight up. Even with the gun fastened into a frame standing on the ground and a special triggering mechanism to allow it to be fired in that orientation, they still had bullets landing over 300 feet away from the gun. So it's pretty unlikely that people holding a gun and firing into the air will actually fire straight up rather than at some angle from the vertical. Also, the non-lethal terminal velocity they observed was based on the bullets tumbling in the air, so that they fell and landed on their sides (not tip first). This was observed when the bullets were fired straight up from their specially-rigged gun. However, they also spoke to an expert with documented cases of people dying from bullets fired into the air and hit the victims tip-first. The Mythbusters speculated (but did not test) that bullets fired at an angle from the vertical could maintain their spin, stabilizing their flight so that they would travel tip-first. This would present a smaller cross-section and most likely a higher (and potentially lethal) terminal velocity.

Yes, exactly

I didn't mean to insinuate that shooting guns up into the air wasn't dangerous, but rather that it isn't the falling bullets, but the ones still on a trajectory that are deadly. And as you can't be certain whether one is one or the other just from the angle in which you shoot the gun - it's better to just not do it.

Why, no, I'm not in the least offended that Relative with whom I am on terms of mutual uninterested civility, rather than closeness, did not ask me to be godmother to her child. After all, given that not only am I not a member of her church, but that I am a staunch, long term, and indeed proselytising atheist, it would be a little unusual if she had asked me, don't you think?

Lot more deaths from shooting a bullet into the air (do they not *realize* that it comes down at high velocity? seriously) than from waving around sparklers, in my opinion.

Who are doing this, and on what occasion? I had not heard of this, it sounds scary!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire It's not *super* common but it happens. I think they maybe think bullets are like balloons, and they just float away? (Balloons, of course, come down eventually, too, and even they can cause problems--although of a very different sort).

Thanks for the link, and... wow. Yeah I do think they must believe the bullets just disappear...

People in our area do this, and on very random occasions. After the last presidential election, New Year's Eve, Fourth of July, Halloween, etc. We now have a police substation and hopefully this won't happen on the Fourth.

Back to the water heater discussion, I am seeing many more tankless water heaters installed on the exterior of buildings, next to the utility meters here in Florida. Since we average 5-10 below freezing nights a year, with several hard freezes a year, I don't know that water heater tanks would survive very well.

New topic

Those yellow lines next to the curb in front of the building are for a fire lane. Don't park there.

Lot more deaths from shooting a bullet into the air (do they not *realize* that it comes down at high velocity? seriously) than from waving around sparklers, in my opinion.

Who are doing this, and on what occasion? I had not heard of this, it sounds scary!!

It's big in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Middle East...very rural areas in many places, but I think they do it in more populated areas of those countries as well.

It's a problem in the US. Thanks to some major advertising campaigns a few years ago, the number of deaths due to this has dropped in SoCal. It was a serious problem for quite a while.

Here's an article from the LAPD. Apparently, in 2005 there were only 145 reports of "shots fired", down 61% for the previous year (this is just New Year's Eve.)

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Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bow lines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. -Mark Twain

Lot more deaths from shooting a bullet into the air (do they not *realize* that it comes down at high velocity? seriously) than from waving around sparklers, in my opinion.

Who are doing this, and on what occasion? I had not heard of this, it sounds scary!!

It's big in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Middle East...very rural areas in many places, but I think they do it in more populated areas of those countries as well.

It's a problem in the US. Thanks to some major advertising campaigns a few years ago, the number of deaths due to this has dropped in SoCal. It was a serious problem for quite a while.

Here's an article from the LAPD. Apparently, in 2005 there were only 145 reports of "shots fired", down 61% for the previous year (this is just New Year's Eve.)

My understanding is that it is an ongoing issue in places like NOLA also, on Mardi Gras and what not.

Here in my little city in central NY, four or five years ago, the woman two houses down from our apartment at the time got shot in the foot by a stray bullet someone fired in the air from who knows where else in the city, while she was sitting on her toilet in her upstairs bathroom. So, clearly, it had enough velocity to penetrate a house roof, whatever layers in between, and still do damage. My understanding is that it was a pretty large-calibre rifle round, though, not just from a pistol. Luckily for her, going through the roof slowed it down enough that it didn't go through her foot, just did a lot of bruising and slight skin puncturing. Poor lady survived the Bosnian civil war and immigrated here, only to get shot while in the safety of her home.

I grew up in a rural area. It was custom in the neighbourhood to go out on the back porch and fire the shotgun into the bush at midnight on New Year's Eve. Of course, we didn't have to worry about trajectory because it was all bush.

But every year, my brother would have to lower or raise the barrel of my gun because I was aiming for the clothesline. I'm almost night blind; I couldn't see it in the dark!

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After cleaning out my Dad's house, I have this advice: If you haven't used it in a year, throw it out!!!!.

Just that a ring serves no other purpose than being a ring. Designer clothing at least fulfills the purpose of clothing (i.e. keeping you warm, keeping you from violating social taboos, etc.) Yeah, it's outrageously expensive and you're paying extra for the status symbol, but you're not buying it *only* for the overpriced value - you're getting some function out of it too. (Maybe $5 worth of function, if that's what you could have spent on something else cheap, but still.)

The point I got from the article was that demand for diamonds is *completely* based on historical advertising - they'd have no intrinsic value without it.

It is fascinating to think about the fact that we wear something that is also used in machinery. If diamonds hadn't taken off as engagement rings, would we wear something else? Will silicon and fiber optics be all the rage in a few hundred years?

Maybe. When alumin(i)um was first extracted from bauxite ore, it was seen as a rare, expensive luxury product. The cap on the Washington Monument in DC is aluminum for that very reason. Nouveau riche people gave their silverware to the servants and bought shiny new aluminum tableware. Now it's so cheap that it's disposable.

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~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~It's true. Money can't buy happiness. You have to turn it into books first. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Lot more deaths from shooting a bullet into the air (do they not *realize* that it comes down at high velocity? seriously) than from waving around sparklers, in my opinion.

We had a death in our county (elementary aged girl) from a stray bullet shot into the sky in celebration at midnight on New Year's Eve.

I think there was one here in Maryland as well. (Or maybe we're thinking about the same event.) I posted the link to people who were whining about whhhhyyyyyyyyy were the mean old police spoiling people's fun by arresting folks caught shooting into the air.

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~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~It's true. Money can't buy happiness. You have to turn it into books first. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~